Jim Carrey has spent decades surprising audiences, so it feels fitting that France’s biggest film awards handed him a moment to surprise them right back. At the César Awards on Thursday, the 64-year-old Canadian-American actor accepted a lifetime honour and did it entirely in French — with a punchline ready. “How was my French? Almost mediocre, right?” he joked, adding that his French roots go back “around 300 years ago.”

The ceremony opened with a tribute sketch from presenter Benjamin Lavernhe, who slipped into Carrey’s signature green-faced swagger from The Mask, one of the films that made Carrey a global star in the 1990s. The crowd didn’t need reminding, but the moment landed anyway. Carrey’s career, after all, started on stand-up stages before exploding into cult comedies like Dumb and Dumber, The Mask and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

Then came the turn no one entirely expected. Carrey pushed into drama, earning a Golden Globe for 1998’s The Truman Show, playing an ordinary man slowly realising his life is a TV production. He earned more critical praise in 2004 for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, starring opposite Kate Winslet as a heartbroken man choosing to erase his memories.

He later found mainstream success again in franchises like Sonic, before stepping back from Hollywood in the early 2020s. The César d’honneur acknowledges that entire arc, from elastic-faced comedy to soulful character work.

The night also spotlighted American director Richard Linklater, who won best director for Nouvelle Vague, his 2025 black-and-white film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. The win added another international nod to the filmmaker behind Boyhood and the Before trilogy.

For Carrey, the honour marked a rare public appearance after years out of the spotlight. For the crowd, it was a reminder that the performer whose career spanned slapstick, surrealism and quiet melancholy still knows exactly how to make an entrance — in any language.